“You know I’ve had these types of experiences (though not visualizing what I might have been – just having the results of those experiences bleed over). What I’m curious about though is whether you think a simultaneous or future life affects you now to prevent problems, warn of them, improve your understanding of them…. If so, why wouldn’t they also solve the problems of the other lives (the pressing, for example) unless we are supposed to go through pain for some reason.”

She raises some good points, points that I’ve heard many times over the years. I will try to clarify my stance on the matter in as succinct a manner as possible without getting all “book length” on the matter (which I really wasn’t able to do, as you’ll see), but in order to do so I must give some “background” information first….

On the one hand, yes, we all are better in our current point-of-view (POV) life because of something we’ve “already experienced” in another life, past or future. This can be a physical thing, like superb physical conditioning, to nonphysical abilities, like mental or emotional prowess. But even this answer is far more “trite” and superficial than Karen’s answer requires, because there are so many variables to both the question and the answer.

So many, many “rabbit holes” to explore!

All of the below are my beliefs…beliefs I’ve cultivated over my life from reading and employing all I’ve learned (I’ve studied religion and philosophy in college and on my own, as well as physics and metaphysics)…so I’m not going to caveat each statement with “This is my belief, but…,” I’m just gonna state each response as a statement. Take it or leave it, but these are my views.

Note that while some of what I’m about to say below may appear to conflict with other things I say…there really is no contradiction. Once you really assimilate what I’m talking about…step back and look at it from as outside of Human perspectives as much as is possible that any Human can do such a thing…all probabilities can co-exist. Again, I have not come up with this stuff on my own…but I’ve come to see the reality behind these concepts in action…in play in my own life. I’ve even written about these to varying degrees in my work.

Simultaneous Time

There is no inherent Time.

There is only our interpretations of physical events, known as “Time,” because we are so “close” to the corporal (“physical”) aspects of this life that this “closeness” is interpreted as “Time.” It’s not a bad thing. It’s actually quite a cool thing. I feel this is quite important for all of us who inhabit this Space/Time Continuum. For instance: if we didn’t have Time, we couldn’t consider or reconsider our actions: you hate a person for whatever reason. If there were no Time how might this “hate” manifest? It’d probably immediately “act” itself out…but, given that we have “Time” that act does not need to be immediately acted upon…but allows us reflection. Sure, others do act on such impulses, but the great majority of us do not…and the ability to reflect still exists whether or not it is chosen.

Time is really our “Safety Net.”

The Point of Power Is In The Present

This means that whatever else exits out there…however many other lives we’re living…none of those lives control who we are in the present, current moment. No other person or “entity” controls our lives.

The current moment is our “me” conscious POV of NOW.

The ME here, now, writing this…having the thoughts I’m putting down on this post…is NOT controlled by any other “me” out there. We can influence each other through “bleed throughs” (explained below)…inspire each other…but no one [other] self controls another self.

So…the “point of power” is always with the current POV’s self.

I realize this gets funky fast…like looking into a mirror that’s reflecting back mirrored images into infinity…but there’s no contradiction here. Since there are multiple you’s and me’s out there, this applies to all of them. It’s like considering all aspects of God and S/He/It…how could God always exist?—where did he always exist?!

Again: your conscious POV is the point of power of all Life Control. This is also where the “Free Will” card resides. This is your free will…your point of power.

We need this kind of focus to really learn on WHAT to focus…and to focus CLEARLY only upon that which we really want to focus upon. To DIRECT our focuses in ways that we can’t even imagine…but certainly are learning how to….

Bleed Throughs

All of life is energy…which is never destroyed, but “merely” changes states. And since there is no Time (only our perception of it)…all energy interacts with all energy. It’s like electromagnetic waves. Heat waves. Ripples in water when objects are thrown into them. It all radiates outward in whatever dimensions exist….two-dimensional water ripples…three-dimensional radio waves…multi-dimensional Life Energy (for lack of a better term, which presently eludes me…). Our thoughts are energy. The movement of our arms…eyelashes. Internal digestion. It’s all formations and transformations of energy.

Yes, it can truly be maddening thinking about all the possibilities/probabilities… but that is the wonder of Life!

Know Thyself

You know yourself. You do.

You may not admit it to anyone…you may not admit it even to yourself…but you know who and what you are on a basic, Human level. All your weirdnesses…your loves, your likes and dislikes.

Your beliefs.

Do you believe in struggle? Religion? War? Love? Sleep? Ants?

You weed out things you do not believe in for things you do believe in…and there are certain things the majority of us have to believe in as a basis of our very existences, like breathing air. Kissing. Eating. Dying. These are the “lowest common denominators” of our accepting Life in this plane of existence. Sure, there are exceptions and some can “bend” the rules a little, but on the whole if we all didn’t agree upon a certain set of pre-existing rules, we couldn’t BE.

As an adult you believe in things you didn’t believe in as a child—and vice versa. Apply this to the different versions of You out there in all your other existences. You’re all different…yet YOU. They (all the other “you’s”) have the very same thing…and just because they are a “you,” does not mean “you” think the same way…or even agree with…each other. Just like the “you” now may not agree with the “you” at 73 or 13. You may not even like some of the other you’s out there. So…just because one “you” out there thinks or knows something doesn’t mean YOU (the one reading this) will agree with it or even take notice, because it goes so counter to your beliefs and et cetera. And really, none of us are “perfect” in any definition of the word (see below). We all make mistakes or occasionally wake up on the wrong side of the bed and make misinformed decisions….

Our conscious minds are our filters. We choose what we want to believe…what we want to perceive, and this also works on an unconscious level. And those other areas of ourselves don’t really know that well…we are learning about….

Barriers

There are obvious physical, mental, and metaphysical barriers to life.

But, again, there really aren’t.

Only the perceptions that there are barriers. So they exist.

Perception is reality…more than you may realize.

Perceptions are every bit as real and solid as concrete footing. They’re not to be ignored. Why so-called barriers are there is too long a subject to get into…but just know that they exist. We can peek behind and around them, but for the most part they are there for a reason…one of which is to allow us the ability to focus on who and where we are NOW. If all the barriers were open, it would be such a flood of information…and our current selves are not equipped to handle that…in this probable existence.

Probable Existences

No one reality—even our “me POV” life—is THE “standard,” or “rock bed” reality. Each reality is as important as the others. Each POV is the POV for that POV.

Sounds silly, but think about it: you’re considering your current POV as The Standard. That all the other POVs are spin offs from you. To be perceived BY you. But each of those other POVs are doing the same thing…and you’re all correct.

Slightly mind-blowing?

Every action spins off a result. Every thought. You think it…”it” takes off. You cannot call it back. Whether or not you follow it, it has taken on a life of its own, much like when you approach a fork in a road. You consider taking the other path, but you take the one you’re on. Well, your considerations spawned an alternate, probable reality where you did take the “other” path…and the path you took became the probable reality.

I know…it hurts to think about. But that’s why there are barriers!

Pain

Pain is not meant to be endured and muscled through as some sort of glorious badass activity. “Pain” is meant to let you know that something you are doing is affecting you in a way that is exhibiting itself as “pain”…an unpleasant sensation to you. You are meant to stop doing whatever it is that is so affecting you as “pain” and reexamine what it is you’re doing.

The attributes of “pain” are not “good” or “bad.” They are just the attributes that manifest in our physical existence as they do…like “bitter” or “sweet” exhibit themselves are not good or bad…they just are. But pain is meant to have you reflect upon what you are doing and to make appropriate changes.

Nobody’s Perfect

We are all learning how to wield the energy of our lives, so we will and do often make mistakes. Misdirect our energies. We are learning the responsibility of our actions…our thoughts as well as their exteriorized (physical) manifestations. We are learning the sanctity of Life. We are learning all this and more…and we are dong so in a medium (physical life) where, for lack of a better description, we have “room for error” on the cosmic scale of things. If we blow ourselves and our Earth up…we only blow up our version…our probably-reality-of-many-Earths-and-lives up. Other versions of Earth and us go on to exist quite well in other probable existences.

That does not make our actions any “less” than any other actions—they are all each extremely important and not to be dismissed.

End Game

Okay, so putting all this together…yes, you can get bleed throughs from your other lives, and yes, even “warnings” or anything else you want to label them, but it’s up to you whether or not you acknowledge and accept them, let alone act on them. But by the same token, there are so many variable to all lives, with the fluidity of life/energy, that circumstances are ever-changing.

So, in answer to Karen’s queries:

I’m curious about though is whether you think a simultaneous or future life affects you now to prevent problems, warn of them, improve your understanding of them….

All time is now and there are endless probabilities. All variations are given their sway. What you avoid in one probability, you confront in another. But, as contradictory as it sounds, yes, to all of the above…if you are open to said input and acknowledge “the knowledge,” you can “prevent” and “be warned.” And you can definitely improve your understanding of anything related to “all this.”

If so, why wouldn’t they also solve the problems of the other lives (the pressing, for example)

All probabilities are given expression…it just depends on your focus. Knowing yourself…how not everything YOU do is perfect and correct…apply that to every other version of you out there. And it’s not so much a case of “solving problems” as it is one of learning and growing…and yes, we all learn and grow through all of our experiences, “good” and “bad.” Think of a movie…the crap characters go through, but after the movie they’re none the worse for wear, and hopefully have learned something from their experience in the movie. But, yes, you could “solve” problems in one probability or another…while the “problems” still exist in other probabilities.

unless we are supposed to go through pain for some reason.”

See all of the above!

We are all learning how to use the energy that is available to us…and as anyone can see…we have a long way to go! We have the definition of “pain” above. “Pain” is not meant to be endured or to “go/power through”…it’s meant to be a signal to change something.

I hope I have helped clarify at least my stance on the matter, though I know all of you have your own beliefs…which is as it should be. I’m no guru, have no desire to even peripherally “touch” upon that kind of status…I’m just trying to work my way through life like every one else out there…and on the way give another perspective about how things may be. How I’ve seen things work in my life. Take what makes sense to you and ignore the rest, it doesn’t matter to me in that sense…yet matters to me a lot in the sense that we’re all Humans, all in this together, all trying to do our level best in our own ways as we make our way through life. I learn from others and I want to help others learn from my over 40 years of quite considered thought and down-right analysis.

I believe in reincarnation…or, more specifically, in the living of simultaneous lives that appear to us in this physical existence as reincarnational.

This belief has led to more than a story or two. The strongest past life is my Civil War existence. This is the one that seems to come up the most. Has the strongest effect on me. It led to the short story “Etched In Stone” (to be posted Feb 26, 2016, on my other blog site). I feel I was part of a Zouave regiment, perhaps the 5th New York. Another life that greatly impacts me is my Titanic life. I feel I died while in the steerage section of that ship. That lead to “The Death of Me.” Existences as a WWII tail gunner and a Ronin/Samurai lead to the short story “Tail Gunner” and a character, “Kioshu,” in The Uninvited. The curious thing about the WWII tail gunner existence is that I also feel I may have been an American ground troop in that war as well. Not only do images of B-17s rattle my bones, but many scenes with ground troops stir my soul quite a bit, too. So, I figure I must’ve had dual counterparts in WWII. But there’s more “military”…

Someone once told me they “saw” me as a Roman soldier. And a chiropractor I used to go to had muscle tested me and came up with 14 past lives…including yet another military life: a WWI life, which was interesting, because I’d never really felt that existence. He might have been confusing it with my WWII lives and his own “filters”…but, in any case, it was interesting (muscle testing can be influenced by the one doing the testing). Yet another World War counterpart. Clearly I’ve dabbled in the military end of things a bit. And I’m quite over it, to tell you the truth. Enough with war.

Another life I haven’t looked into much was one as a witch. A “kid witch.” In early 1984, a woman (a witch) told me she thought I’d been a kid-witch of 12 or 13 years old and had been pressed to death. She also told me that she’d been the cause of my death. I later found this in a letter I’d written to the late Jane Roberts and Rob Butts in 1984. In it I’d written that this present-day witch:

“…keeps seeing me as a coven member, and I tell her that she’s probably just seeing a probable self of me. She also says that we knew each other in a ‘past life.’ That I was a little kid-witch, about 13, and she was the death of me. Interestingly, [while with her one day] I saw an image of a young kid, about 12 – 13, being pressed to death–an agonized face. I told her this after she told me what I told you.”

Curiously, I could find no instances of a teenager being pressed to death over the Internet, so who knows what we’re really picking up on…or maybe it was done “in private”…you know, once you get past believing in any of this….

Interestingly, as a teenager I did have a weird thing happen to me that relates to the above: one day while looking for something in the Lake Clear, N.Y. garage, I had pulled some upright sheets of plywood toward me, away from the garage wall (the wall closest to the house). As I did so, I felt the plywood (this is how I thought of it then) seemingly take on a life of their own and fall into me. I pressed with all my might and was utterly helpless…and it raised a fear in me I had not experienced at that time. The entire “pile” knocked me over onto the gravel floor, all 10 or 15 or however many sheets there were, on top of me. Those suckers were heavy! It was the first time I’d felt so utterly helpless…and it felt so damned weird. I managed to get out from under them no worse for the wear, but that moment remains etched in my mind. I thought back to that later, after the witch told me the above. Also as a kid, I’d read up on the history of witchcraft, but it never really held much interest to me after reading about it…though I did get into it as an interest (not a practitioner) for a while, reading several books on it….

While visiting Maui, in 1998, with my wife, I had the following experience (taken from my diary):

“Nov 14, 1998, 1:36 p.m.

Note: While driving around, had a particularly spiritual experience, like the Manassas one, north of where we were staying [in Maui]. Laura and I drove north, to just inside that one-laned road, and we both felt that this drive felt “weird”! It was overcast, and late in the afternoon, but it was more than that. I again felt like I was straddling two worlds, and I got to thinking: oh boy, am I treading on ground I treaded before? Had Laura and I been alive in another life, past or future, here? Maybe had I been a spiritual kahuna? Had I died here in some ritual or war? It was verrrrrrrry weird….”

As much as I very much loved visiting Maui…I have absolutely no desire to permanently live there (though am perfectly willing to go back as many times as possible!). Whatever the reason…it seems to stem from the above “weirdness” and finally made total “sense” to me.

Another interesting one is seeing images of me walking in monk-like robes over sand in a far-away (barren) land. I wonder if it’s Australia. I haven’t gotten much from this imagery.

There have been a couple of other possible lives I’ve glimpsed, but none of them are as strong and emotional as the ones mentioned above.

Now…as fascinated as I am by the lives I feel I’ve lived/am living in other realities, I don’t focus my energies so much on finding out all I can about them (i.e., “reliving” them) as in acknowledging them, listening to them when I need to, but focusing my conscious thoughts and efforts to my current existence. Those lives…those consciousnesses are elsewhere…being focused upon by the me that is there…and I need to focus on the me that is here…but acknowledging that my other selves do still exit elsewhere and are every bit as important and real as the me I am, here, writing this. Some of those lives I really don’t want to revisit anyway.

If you keep focusing on the past (or “elsewhere”), you’re never really living in the present.

I feel the important thing about learning about our past lives is that we have them and acknowledge them when we become aware of them. Send them positive energy. I feel in doing this we can enhance their lives…change them, even. Remember I believe in simultaneous lives…not so much past lives. All our lives are ongoing…and this being my belief, I feel we can all help each other out. Make our collective lives better…which therefore helps out our individual “present” lives as well. It’s all energy…and all energy is connected. As we help ourselves out…we’re also helping out everyone else.

So, while it’s cool and interesting to learn about the other lives we live…we still need to focus on our present-day lives (“Over Now,” by Alice in Chains has been playing just now, and “Say Goodbye” just popped up from Theory of a Deadman…). I feel that’s also why many of us cannot remember much about our other lives. Or why we only get bits and pieces. I feel we have built-in filters. We only get what we can “handle”…or only enough “bleed throughs” to remind us who “we are”…but not enough to cause us to focus so heavily on these other lives so as to ignore our current focus. The purpose of having a life is to live it. Live and focus on the things in front of us. That, in turn, helps us all in our overall experience of Life and growth of our soul.

And each of you all have this ability. I bet you’ve all had some weird imagery or experience you can’t readily categorize that fits into the realm of reincarnation or simultaneous lives but have dismissed it as fantasy.

Well, don’t.

Acknowledge it…send it positive, constructive energy when you get such images…and move on. It’s okay if you do ignore it/them…they happened/are happening whether or not you believe it/them…or acknowledge them (you know, given you believe in this stuff…). But they pop into your consciousness for a reason. So, why not give them their due? No one else has to know! It’s just between you and…you. And it doesn’t even matter if you’re misinterpreting what you’re “getting.” Just acknowledge the thought…the idea…it.

So this post is not just about the reincarnation of F. P. Dorchak…it’s also about the reincarnation of you.